Monday, June 24, 2013

Day 11. All aboard the roller coaster ride of emotions. Please remain seated for the entire ride....I am now thinking my last post was premature. The lovely previous heartwarming thoughts filled with rainbows and butterflies are now covered in bruises and sweat from the hot flashes. I am currently rocking some lovely shades of blue on my stomach, and gone are the thoughts of balance and calmness. I have snapped more than a snapping turtle in the past few days and I am already an extremely sensitive person but I find myself crying for literally no reason one so ever. If this is even a small glimpse of what pregnancy would be like, I am considering myself and those around me slightly blessed ;)

I received a call today that my insurance company will NOT be covering the sperm cryopreservation and most likely not covering the embryo cryopreservation in July, so we are now financially responsible for $350 this Wednesday to freeze the sperm and $1,750 to freeze the embryos. I may or may not have told the woman today that I would bring my Pack It lunch cooler and throw those little ice age babies in my freezer for free until May. Clearly this is a mean cruel joke? Almost $2,000 to freeze our little Parisicles for less than a year? I knew this was going to be hard, but I am already feeling emotional over this whole situation and I was hoping that for once something would go easily. I am overwhelmed and just want to scream or cry, or maybe both. Probably both at the same time the way this roller coaster is going, keep your seat belts on ;)

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Night 6 of injections complete!! Almost a whole week done, a week closer! Aside from the occasional hot flash, things are going well. Dripping in sweat from time to time throughout the day has it's benefits; one, I can never be called pale because my skin is a nice tone of red to burgundy at all times. Two, sweating in any form, to me equates to exercise, so in my mind each drip of sweat is one less minute needed on the treadmill. I have begun tracking "hot flashes" under activity points on my Weight Watchers app. And lastly, its a nice excuse to keep my home set to igloo like standards at all times. My condo is a comfortable 60 degrees, which for many would equal teeth chattering but for this Lupron injected polar bear it equals heaven. After not having a period for nearly seven years these cramps I have been experiencing for the past day are a real blast from the past that I truly did not miss. Although I am happy to report no bruising as of yet on my stomach at the injection sites, no redness or swelling. No mood swings, or attitude changes that I have noticed as of yet, but I guess that is a biased opinion...Lou (my loving fiancee) is still alive and kicking so that should be a good indicator that I am not experiencing any sudden behavioral changes. :) I must give him credit; Lou has been absolutely amazing through all of this, not that I ever doubted him for a second (I AMMMMM marrying him for a reason;)) but I know this whole situation is a lot to take on. For me, I have been dealing with this and working towards acceptance for years, this wild and crazy world of infertility is a whole new ball game for Lou. Luckily for me, he's already my MVP <3
What hurts more than the injections, more than the cramps,is that some people I thought would be here for me through this, cheering me on and sharing every exciting detail and every step getting closer to being a mom, have not been. Knowing how badly I have wanted this. Instead telling me that this blog is attention seeking and that I am looking for a "pity party". That I am "playing the victim". Let me quickly and simply clarify once again; this blog is in no way meant to be for such reasons. First and foremost; "pity, party of 0, your table is now available" ; "You're Invited! To a Pity Party for Colleen!" I have never asked for or expected pity from anyone. Please do not check your mailboxes repeatedly because there will not be an invitation to a pity party thrown in my honor anytime soon. This blog was and still is intended to be a way to share my journey with others. To remind people, myself included, that no matter what you have been through, what you have experienced, there is always something to strive for. That with a little courage and determination you can achieve more than you can ever imagine. That everything I have been through has lead me to this moment, and if I was able to survive all I have previously endured, this crazy, emotional, heart wrenching procedure of "building a baby" will be a walk in the park in comparison.
It makes me want to cry because I would love more than anything to be able to pick up the phone and tell my Mom all about this, to ask her for advice, but I know that heaven is a long distance call...what makes the tears really fall is knowing that someone who I thought would be my number one cheerleader through this has retired their pom poms and bullhorn.
So, while it hurts my heart tremendously to go forward without certain people, I am reminded of the quote; "It's not where you are in life, it's who you have by your side that matters." Feeling thankful for Lou, his family, my amazingly wonderful friends, and of course all of you. Unless of course you R.S.V.P 'd for that pity party..... ;)

Saturday, June 15, 2013

Where does one even begin to look for someone to carry their child? Perhaps Craigslist may be interested in adding "uterus" to the list under the "Searching For" section? I mean all I really need is to rent a uterus for 9 months, maybe a leasing program should be created? If you can lease a car for 3 years, why not a uterus for a mere 9 months?
At the suggestion of my fertility doctor I joined and searched a surrogate mom website.I couldn't help but hold in giggles as I pictured a support group similar to AA. I imagined a circle of chairs of woman with myself standing up at a podium. "Hi, I am Colleen and I have been without a uterus for 6 years." My circle of new friends would quickly drone back; "Hi, Colleen." Being new to this whole world of surrogacy I was left wondering; do I create a personal ad similar to one on a dating website? It asks for a name, clearly UTERUS LESS in CT was my first thought. I brainstormed quickly and made a quick draft:

UTERUS LESS IN CT posts:

CT Female seeks healthy woman with fantastic uterus:

Hi, I am a 30 year old woman from CT searching for my match. Must love children and carrying them literally for 9 months. Must enjoy backaches, swollen ankles, and gaining weight. If this sounds like you and you think you may be the one please contact me!

Instantly my inbox was flooded with women who were able and willing to do this remarkable favor for me. All one woman asked for in return was a signature for her daughter's college loan, while another asked for room and board while carrying the child. While both options seemed oh so enticing, I mean what's one more college loan to add to the pile I currently am the proud owner of? And surely my fiancee and I can squeeze one more person into our one bedroom condo, right??? Decisons, decisions....

Thursday, June 13, 2013

Ok so here we go, ready or not. Yesterday I went in for another ultrasound and got the call today that I was post ovulatory and could begin Lupron injections. I am a pretty tough cookie, but the thought of sticking myself everyday is something less than desired. I was sent home yesterday with a goodie bag of needles, the medication,my very own sharp container and alcohol wipes. The shot is administered once daily into the stomach. I always knew that extra padding in my middle would serve a purpose one day!!! After several warm-up back and forth practice shot motions I was able to inject my stomach and administer the medication. One down, many more to go....

Ok so now that we got the sappy emotional introduction out of the way, let's get to the main reason for this blog. If you have a quick second, please google "surrogate" or "gestational surrogate" and watch in horror as the results come up. The first few images were of aliens and surrogate bodies for extraterrestrial life forms. Determined to find some reading material to assist me on this journey, I searched Barnes & Nobles to also come up with books about surrogate life forms and other science fiction novels. While I am and always have been a fan of E.T., I am feeling as though that little alien has nothing more to offer me than some leftover Reese's pieces.
With that being said, I wanted and needed a support system, a group to listen to me and to hear how I am feeling through all this. While I under go one of the biggest and most exciting journeys of my life, I promise to share every detail in complete honesty with hopes that other women out there who may be experiencing this can know that someone out there understands. I call this blog ;What to Expect When You're NOT Expecting, because my story is just that. There are numerous books and websites about the wonderful world of pregnancy and childbirth, but how about some information for those of us who are doing things a little different? So let's grab some tissues and share some tears of laughter and sadness together as you accompany me on my quest to build a baby :)

“Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you; they're
supposed to help you discover who you are.” (Reagon)

As a child, you picture your life as happy and easy. You do
not picture the down times or the hard moments. I had a vision of a life filled
with happiness and ease. My life has instead been one filled with many hurdles
and difficulty. It is not how many times you get knocked down, what is more
important is the getting back up. The dusting yourself off and finding fight in
yourself, a drive to keep going. As I have been told many times, “I was dealt a
rough hand.” But through my life I have learned that if you just hold onto that
hand, you can turn it into a winning one.

From the moment my mother was diagnosed with cancer, I
confronted emotions and issues that many adults have never faced. I was sixteen
years old and forced to develop a sudden level of maturity as the innocence of
my childhood slipped away from me. My mother was diagnosed in March of 1999, at
the age of 39. I can still remember the day she told us the news, sitting on
the floral couch and wondering why this was happening. Why a woman who had such
a big heart and would do anything for anyone was now forced to fight a battle
that she would ultimately lose. Why a women with three small children would be
taken before her time. I can still remember driving with her to chemotherapy
and sitting in the brown leather couches and the oncologist boasting about the
large screen televisions in the treatment room as if watching Maury on a 60
inch television would make this experience any better for anyone in the room.
The treatments literally took the life out of my mother. She would always ask
me to stop at the hotdog stand near the office to get a foot long and a Pepsi,
although within hours she would be emptying her stomach. This became our
tradition, and to this day I have not been able to return to that hotdog stand.
She became so weak and withered away. She lost her fight way before she lost
her battle because she was too physically weak to fight. She could no longer
sleep alone; afraid to close her eyes, so I would join her in her bed each
night. I assumed the role of the parent, attempting to comfort my scared
mother, but unlike the parents trying to get rid of the monsters under the bed,
my mother’s monster was inside her and killing her. There was nothing for me to
do but simply be there. After a great deal of discussions my mother decided to
sign a DNR order, preventing any life saving measures to be used on her. At the
time I was angry and could not understand how she could give up or quit on my
siblings and me; however it wasn’t her giving up, it was her body giving up.
She caught a cold in the summer and was then hospitalized as she was becoming
septic and her body was beginning to shut down.

On July 26, 1999 I got the one
phone call that no one ever wants to be on the other end of. It was the nurse from
the hospital, asking if we could get there as soon as possible to say our
goodbyes. The car ride was only fifteen minutes, but the trip felt as though it
was several hours long. I remember my father driving and my ten year old
brother and twelve year old sister sitting in the backseat, none of us
speaking, none of us wanting to discuss what was about to happen. That at this
very moment, all of our lives would be forever changed. That nothing after this
car ride would ever be the same. We rushed to be by her side and we all got a
chance to say our own goodbyes, and then within a few hours, with her parents,
siblings, and children gathered around her bed, she took her last breath and
left us. My life instantly became different, a childhood now tainted with a
memory of loss and sadness. Every moment in my life now became and continues to
be measured by my mother’s death. Every situation is remembered as “before” or
“ after”. Every memory is categorized into the happy, carefree times prior to
our significant loss or the dark and less desirable times that came to be
following July 26th. The death of a parent and at such a young age
specifically, forced my view of the world and my sense of responsibility to
take a dramatic turn. I had barely accepted and processed my mother's diagnosis
and had watched over the months as the strong, loving woman I admired withered
away and weakened. In the last year of
her life, I was given the greatest gift I will ever receive: the gift of deep
experience. I am now able to recognize the adversity that accompanies any good
in life. My mother taught me about loyalty, love and strength. But most
importantly, she gave me the opportunity to see through her eyes, triggering compassion
in me and a sense of responsibility to those I love and the world around me
that I might not have otherwise discovered. Our mother’s death reminded all of
us to truly cherish one another, and to find positive in any situation. To live
our lives to the fullest as our mother tried to do. Even on her worst day she
was always attempting to smile. Smiling to hide the pain, smiling to remind us
that even in your hardest moments in life there is something to smile about. My
mother lived her life the way I can only attempt to live mine. She showed me
and everyone around her that life may not always be “fair” and that everyone
experiences tough situations, but your mentality and the way you chose to deal
with these experiences is what is important. I never once heard her complain or
feel bad for herself, she was and always will be the most positive influence in
my life.

In 2004, after an altercation with
my father and his new wife, I was asked to leave our
childhood home. My father, the man who had helped bring me into this world and
had always been there for me,had suddenly changed. He became withdrawn after my
mother’s death and lost himself quickly in a new and unhappy marriage. He chose
to remarry a woman without any children, and quite obviously did not want
children. She made my siblings and I feel unwelcome in our own home and treated my siblings
and I as though we were burdens. We were simply children who were still
mourning the loss of their mother, children who needed extra love and guidance
I was 22 years old and still a full time student. I was suddenly living on my own without the financial support
of anyone. Once again I was placed in a role filled with responsibility. Over
the next few years, I worked three jobs and attended school to continue working
on my Bachelor's. I took care of myself to the best of my abilities,
although there were times I ate peanut butter and jelly for the entire month,
times I would have to steal toilet paper from work because I could not even
afford to buy simple necessities. Every hurdle thrown my way seemed
impossible and unbeatable. There were many times I considered giving up, just
dropping out of school and working to better my financial situation. But as I had done
so many times before, I continued to move forward. I learned to rely on myself before others, and to work hard for everything I needed. This experience taught me lessons that have contributed to the strong, independent woman I
have become. To this day, our father will not
speak to me, when faced with the choice placed upon him, he chose his new wife
over his own children. I used to feel so upset and lost by this, now an orphan.
I had lost my mother through death and now my father through his own decision. I have tried several times to mend the situation with him, knowing
that life is too short to live with such regret and bitterness in my heart,
however, he is not interested in doing so. It is now him I feel badly for, as
he is missing out on being part of his daughter’s life. He is the one who
will be replaced walking me down the aisle in April. It is no longer myself that I feel badly for, it is him as he has chosen a life of solitude.

It was during this time I was
diagnosed with cervical cancer. After numerous failed surgeries, I underwent a
hysterectomy at the age of 24. I had gone into my doctor’s office thinking I
was there for biopsies to be done. He had called me on a Friday and told me the
results were back, first PAP since my CO2 laser ablation in July, and the
results were not good, so it was biopsy time. I sat on the table, undressed,
and vulnerable, waiting for them to wheel in the colposcopy machine I
recognized a little too well, but instead in came my doctor's assistant who
asked me to get dressed and meet him in the conference room. I started crying
at that point, knowing what the conference room meant. It was Wednesday,
October 18, 2006 and my life was forever changed. He scheduled my surgery for
Monday, October 23, 2006. He wanted to get me into the operating room as
soon as possible, as I am only twenty four years old and have been fighting him
on this decision since he first offered it five years previous. I am glad now
that I only had four days, four days to be nervous, four days to be scared, and
four days to convince myself that I was not alone and that this decision,
although one of the hardest in my life was the correct one. I grew sick of hearing
the words brave, and “you’ll get through this”. THIS is something I don’t know
if I will ever truly get through. I lost a part of myself on that operating
table that day, something much more than my physical parts. But talking about
it, listening to other women's struggles and courage has been great therapy for
me. It reminds me that I am getting through this and slowly but surely I will
be better. And that by sharing my stories, I may be able to not only help
myself in the healing process, but someone else. Most twenty four year olds are recent college
graduates, starting their lives in positive manners; I instead was preparing to
undergo a major life altering surgery. I was scared and with the support of my
sister and close friends began a physically and mentally grueling recovery.

The surgery took so much from me;
it took something from me I can never get back. The scar I know have on my
abdomen is easier to deal with than the emotional one that is still healing. This
situation has caused me to change my entire outlook and affected my life in so
many ways. I am now 30 years old and feeling the pains of this situation daily,
struggling with the fact that I can not be a mother the natural way, that I can
not experience the joy of childbirth, that I can not feel my child’s heartbeat
inside me, have a growing baby bump, ultrasound pictures, or just have that
instant connection that a mother and child have. Instead, I will be using a
surrogate, and “building a baby” as my friends and I like to joke. I am a firm
believer that laughter is the best medicine, and my ongoing joke is that I will
be the lucky woman who is able to drink at her own baby shower. Cocktails
served in pink and blue test tube shots of course ;) I joke that it will be
similar to a pizza delivery, and I can be called to pick up the baby when it’s
done cooking and just leave a tip. I joke because it is easier to make others
and myself laugh than cry. I have dealt with the loss of my mother, and in
another sense my father. And now I am finally grieving the loss of my
fertility. Because that is truly what it is, a loss of something I so
desperately wanted. I know that I am fortunate enough to even have the option
of using a gestational carrier; however, I can not lie and say that I don’t
tear up seeing the daily ultrasound or baby announcements from friends on
Facebook. I just want other girls or women in my similar situation to know its
okay. It is okay to cry, it is okay to be upset and it is okay to be angry. But
at the same time, I am hopeful, and excited to go through my own experience. It
will be different, and at times strange, but what part of my life so far has
been normal? I am living a new version of normal.

I have often been told by many who
know me that my life is like a movie. To that I always respond with a smile. I
must agree, my life is like a movie. It is a story of survival, a story of
perseverance and courage. A story of triumph. My blockbuster has had tears as
well as much laughter and joy. Right now, my life, my "movie" is
paused. I am currently thirty years old, and happier than I have ever been. I
am an ABA therapist for children on the autism spectrum. I am engaged to marry
my prince charming, and so proud of where my life is currently. I feel every moment;
both positive and negative in my life has led to me to this. My obstacles in my
life have helped show me who I am supposed to become. I am able to use my
experiences to channel them into daily empathy and compassion for others. Be
the outlet for others to understand and process their feelings. Every challenge
I have faced has further convinced me that this life is too short and to
cherish every single moment with every person in your life. Luckily, this movie
is being directed by me and I have an excellent cast and look forward to every
minute of this unraveling blockbuster until the credits roll.